Dash was created in 2014 by Evan Duffield as a fork of Litecoin.
The project launched under the name XCoin in January 2014. It was later renamed Darkcoin and then Dash, a name derived from “digital cash.” Because Litecoin itself is derived from Bitcoin, Dash belongs to the broader family of cryptocurrencies that share ancestry with Bitcoin’s codebase.
Dash introduced a two-tier network featuring ordinary miners and masternodes. Masternodes supported additional services and participated in governance, while miners continued to produce blocks through proof-of-work. The project also promoted features called InstantSend and PrivateSend, although their operation and privacy properties should not be confused with those of privacy-focused cryptocurrencies designed around stronger anonymity systems.
Evan Duffield remained associated with the project’s early development, while later governance was handled through the Dash network and its organizations. Dash is often confused with Darkcoin because Darkcoin was an earlier name for the same project, not a separate cryptocurrency.